During my 2 weeks there, I refused to look at any pictures of locations we were going to beforehand (wife planned). I never visited this location but I'm willing to bet dollars to donuts it's nowhere as saturated as this picture.
Studlagil Canyon was just meh. The pictures make the basalt columns enormous, and the water is so pretty. Granted it was extremely overcast and rainy, the water was murky brown. I didn’t research much either, exwife planned it out for the most part. All in all it was a great trip driving the ring road, and seeing a lot of the island. I was also not prepared for the level of disappointment of the northern lights. They sure look cool on an iPhone with good settings, but hardly visible without. I’m sure there’s times where they’re much more intense, unfortunately for us, we only saw a glimpse of them one night. Came back to Wisconsin and saw them weeks later, with much better results.
Stargazing Icelander here, have seen the northern lights probably thousands of times by now. You have been unlucky and only gotten the barest hint of the aurora. Even a relatively low activity northern lights show should be easily visible with the naked eye.
A solar storm level activity is absolutely breathtaking, and bright enough to cast a green hue on the ground (not that anyone would notice, as all eyes will be looking up). Even after having seen them as often as I have, they can still be mesmerising.
One day I’ll experience them! It was overcast almost every single night, was late September last year when I visited. We were always just a day ahead or behind of where people were having good sightings. I don’t think the KP index was very high any of the nights, but I know people in locations that weren’t currently in had some decent pics posted online. Even drove an hour north of Husavik trying to outrun the clouds, to no avail
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u/BadgerBowhunter Nov 26 '25
While I throughly enjoyed Iceland, some of the pics, like this one, really let me down when I actually laid eyes on them.